A week of dinners made simple (and cheap)
 
Do you struggle to decide what to cook for dinner each night? Do you end up reaching for the freezer or just chucking spuds in the oven and having them with baked beans from the can? We’re going to bring you a week’s worth of meals on a budget. The only thing you have to promise us is that you’ll go and find yourself a fresh market to get your veggies from. Not only will they be fresher and last longer in your fridge (saving you precious shopping time), they’ll be heaps cheaper too.
 
We shop once a week. A quick fly around Coles/Woolies/IGA for the essentials such as bread, rice milk, school lunches, cans of beans and frozen peas, on to the Asian deli for tofu of varying kinds and some spices and then to the fresh market for a trolley full of veggies. It’s about 15 mins further to drive to the fresh market rather than just going to our local Coles/Woolies/IGA but the fact that we can shop just once a week and have everything we need (plus the amazingly cheaper prices) makes that extra time totally worth it and still a massive saving when it comes to time AND those precious dollars that we all work so hard to earn.

This is the most simple, tasty comfort food recipe and it’s pretty damn healthy too! It’s quick to put together, and then you can get on with life while it cooks away in the oven.
 
You’ll need:

• A few leeks (2-4 depending on how big you’re making your dish)
• A handful of sweet potatoes
• Salt and pepper for seasoning
• About a cup and a half to two cups of breadcrumbs
• A small handful of rosemary, chopped
• And a dash of oil

Salad dressing is pretty basic. You want a bit of acidity, a bit of sweetness and a little saltiness. Then add any other flavours you want to go with the salad you’re dressing (like herbs of varying kinds etc.).
 
If you use a screw top jar, you can just add your ingredients and shake. Easy. If you want to use fancy ingredients like herbs you can use a blender or small food processor to grind it all up. Otherwise it’s elbow grease and a mortar and pestle (or just a knife and a chopping board!). Chopped or crushed herbs make a great addition, though they will go a bit manky so you'll have to eat it a bit faster. No hardship there.
 
Here are some ideas for each of the elements you need…

We always cook these two recipes one day after the other because when you make the stir fry you’ll cook too much rice which you’ll then use the next night for the fried rice. (The secret to really fantastic fried rice is to use cooked rice that’s been cooled, preferably overnight.) You can substitute pretty much any of the ingredients, they are both really simple dishes and easy to modify to suit your own tastes. The fried rice is served in lettuce leaves (let everyone you’re feeding do their own, it’s fun and quite messy) which means you don’t even have to bother making a salad.

These are delicious and so easy they almost make themselves. Plus, you’ve almost definitely got all the ingredients in your cupboard right now… They are of course gluten free and vegan – however, if you’re not a celiac feel free to use any kind of plain flour.

It’s not a Mexican feast if you don’t have some guacamole, salsa or sour-cream involved! Here are our favourite, and simple, recipes.
 
Salsa
You really don’t need to get too complicated when it comes to salsa! It’s ok to substitute ingredients or leave some out depending on what you’ve got in your fridge.

I am not claiming that there is anything even slightly authentic about this recipe or that it is in any way true to it’s Mexican roots. However, as I’m not sure there were many coeliac, vegan Mexicans back in the day, I think we can just call it the product of culinary evolution. A delicious, healthy product of evolution.
 
To make proper tortillas you need special lime treated corn flour and a tortilla press. This recipe is a fair bit more simple. If you don’t have chickpea or millet flour, don’t worry, just use the full 2 cups of plain flour – the other flours just add a bit of extra chewiness and depth.

​Sushi is one of those things that can tend to divide people. It’s fishy, and even if it’s not fishy (in the case of vegetarian or chicken filled sushi), the seaweed wrapping has its very own fishy taste. While we quite like our vegan sushi (especially when doused in enough pickled ginger and soy sauce!) but we’ve also found a way around the fishy taste for those days when we’re in a not-so fishy mood.
 
Sushi essentials:
 
Sushi rice – it’s nice and sticky. We have made sushi with our favourite brown basimati rice in the past and it works, it just won’t made quite as firm a roll.
Sushi seasoning – for seasoning the rice. If you can’t get any you can just dissolve a little sugar in hot water and add some vinegar and salt.
Soy sauce – gluten free in our case.
Pickled ginger – it just isn’t sushi without pickled ginger!
Wasabi – again, it’s not sushi without some wasabi.
Yaki Nori, or for our not-so-fishy (and not-so-authentic) sushi, vietnamese rice paper.

This stuff is so easy it almost makes itself and so delicious everyone will want to eat it, all the time. It’s GF, vegan and waaaay better for you than shop bought toasted muesli. Get amongst it!
 
¼ cup honey
¼ cup olive oil or Nuttlex or other vegan spread
2 ½ cups buckwheat groats
½ cup sunflower seeds (hulled)
2 cups puffed rice

​I don’t want to exaggerate but shop bought vegan yogurt can be one of life’s greatest disappointments. When I first saw it for sale I was a little bit surprised by the cost but I decided that taking out a second mortgage and selling my first born child into slavery was ok because…yogurt. So, I threw it into the trolley and hurried off home with my prize. Only to discover that it tastes like blended up shoes with a side order of insecticide and artifical sweetener.
 
They say that the best way to get over getting bucked off a horse is to get right back on, so since that devastating moment I’ve tried pretty much every brand of vegan yogurt that I can buy. And while some have been pretty good (thank you coconut yogurt) they are generally rather underwhelming.
 
Our journey into making vegan yogurt has so far been paved with coconut cream and we have left behind us the ghosts of failed batches, though their memory lingers on. But fear not, gentle reader, for you can learn from our mistakes and hopefully in no time you too will be whipping up beautiful batches of dairy free yogurt.